All articles in Military
22nd April, 2024 in Military, Society & Culture
A tale of two court cases
The thought arrived as I was hovering inside a crowded coffee shop directly opposite the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. Tables and bars pulsed with suited, brief cased, device-bashing professionals; the buzz from conversation being shouted and spoken into phones and faces…
3rd April, 2024 in Military
The attack on Épinal
And so, in the early morning of 11 May, 973 heavy bombers took off in fine weather from airfields across East Anglia. Their mission was Operation 350: to fly 500 miles across France to attack railway marshalling yards in Mulhouse, Épinal, Belfort and Chaumont, and an airfield at…
15th January, 2024 in Military, Women in History
Remembering Patricia Rorke: A remarkable woman who lived through World War II
Author of Remarkable Women of the Second World War, Victoria Panton Bacon, remembers Pat Rorke. Pat died on 9th December 2023, aged 100 years and five weeks. ‘After the war, you have to learn to live together, remember that you are all human … behind all the bare recounted facts…
18th October, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military
Nobody Lives Here: A wartime Jewish childhood
This memoir is a gripping and unusual account of a survivor of the Shoah in Holland. With impressively clear recall of his childhood and early teens – he was 11 at the outbreak of the war – Lex Lesgever writes of his years on the run and in hiding in Amsterdam and beyond. It is u…
15th August, 2023 in History, Military
Siege warfare in the Middle Ages
In the medieval era, pitched battles were risky affairs; the work of years could be undone in a single day thanks to the vagaries of weather, terrain or simple bad luck. C.B. Hanley author of the Mediaeval Mystery series, including the latest addition Blessed…
12th July, 2023 in Biography & Memoir, Military, True Crime
Why did the United States allow the worst war criminal into America?
Until I began researching the story of the teenager who risked his life to bring the ‘Butcher of the Balkans’ to justice, I knew little of the atrocities committed in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia during the Second World War. I learned that I am far from alone. Most people I s…
23rd September, 2022 in Military
Black Poppies: Young Reader Edition
Dedicated chronicler of Black British history, Stephen Bourne explores the many and extraordinary ways in which black people helped Britain fight the Great War, on the battlefield and at home in this new illustrated edition of Black Poppies for children. ‘Publishers in Britain ar…
29th July, 2022 in Maritime, Military
How a shocking naval disaster nearly sank Winston Churchill
Just six weeks into the First World War, three British armoured cruisers, HMS Hogue, Aboukir and Cressy, patrolling in the southern North Sea, were sunk by a single German U-boat. The defeat made front page news across Europe. It was the biggest story from the war to date; it sho…
22nd June, 2022 in Biography & Memoir, Military, Women in History
Remarkable Women of the Second World War
If I may say so myself, as author of the twelve stories (and epilogue) about the Second World War contained in Remarkable Women of the Second World War, anyone with an insatiable appetite for knowledge about World War Two must read this book. It does not have to be read in…
19th May, 2022 in Military
Oradour-sur-Glane: An echo from history
As news spread of the Allied landings in Normandy, and thoughts turned to the liberation of their country, few throughout France could have predicted the fate of Oradour-sur-Glane, a community in Haute-Vienne, near the city of Limoges. On 10 June 1944 the inhabitants of the large…
13th April, 2022 in Military, Women in History
Honey traps
“Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.”attributed to oscar wilde That honey traps remain among the most widely known and least understood category of intelligence operations is not surprising. Pop culture is filled with images of the irresistible fe…
25th March, 2022 in Local & Family History, Military
My Grandfather’s Knife: How ordinary objects tell extraordinary wartime stories
A knife, a diary, a recipe book, a string instrument, and a cotton pouch. Each belonged to an individual in their twenties during the Second World War: I talked to elderly family members, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances – people drawn from everyday life – asking them the s…